Finite Element Analysis of O-ring Sealing Performance of Manned Submersible Viewports
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TECHNICAL ARTICLE—PEER-REVIEWED
Finite Element Analysis of O-ring Sealing Performance of Manned Submersible Viewports J. X. Li . P. F. Liu . S. B. Wang . J. X. Leng
Submitted: 13 June 2020 Ó ASM International 2020
Abstract This paper studies the effects of compression rate, sealing gap, working medium pressure, and rubber hardness on the O-ring sealing performance of manned submersible viewports. Large-deformation contact analysis between the viewport and the seat under water depth 100– 500 m is performed using implicit finite element analysis (FEA), after introducing the Mooney–Rivlin hyperelastic constitutive model for the nitrile rubber O-ring. The influence laws of various parameters above on the O-ring sealing performance of viewport are obtained by studying the distributions of the von Mises stress and contact stress as well as the contact width. This work provides numerical approach for design and analysis of the O-ring sealing of viewports. Keywords Rubber O-ring sealing Large-deformation contact analysis Manned submersible viewports Finite element analysis (FEA)
Introduction In recent 10 years, China has continuously developed ‘‘Hexie’’ and ‘‘Jiaolong’’ deep-sea manned submersibles successfully, which now can dive into the maximum 7000 m water depth [1]. The safety evaluation of J. X. Li P. F. Liu (&) J. X. Leng Ocean College, Zhejiang University, Zhoushan 316021, China e-mail: [email protected] S. B. Wang Institute of Chemical Machinery and Process Equipment, School of Energy Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
submersibles is involved by a series of issues including the strength, buckling, creep, fatigue, and sealing performance of the titanium alloy shells and the PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate) viewport shells [2]. Although there are already much work on the first four issues above [3–10], relatively little theoretical work is focused on the sealing performance between different shells, which should be significantly considered to prevent high-pressure seawater from squeezing into the manned submersible, as shown in Fig. 1. Du et al. [11] pointed out that the compatibility that is represented by the stress distributions between the seat and the viewport can be improved by adjusting the structural sizes and shapes but did not consider the sealing structures. Currently, the rubber O-ring with hyperelastic mechanical properties is used for the sealing structure that contacts with the seat and the viewport in a deformable manner under water pressure. Currently, there is some work addressing different-shape sealing performances for different applications. Zhou et al. [12] performed FEA on the D-ring sealing performance of high-pressure hydrogen experimental equipment. He et al. [13] studied the sealing performance of large carbon steel flange O-ring leakage blocking with pressure by experimental approaches. Cao et al. [14] studied how baffle affects the sealing performance of underwater glider in deep-sea environment using numerical method and indicated that baffle is helpfu
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